Love Games: A Lesbian Romance Read online

  “She’s the queen! You don’t vote for her!”

  “Don’t look at me like I don’t know anything about this game. I’m the master around here.”

  “Right, you’re the master and sometimes I think you don’t know anything about the game you’re playing. The queen is supposed to be the head of the factions. Or she’s the head of the royal faction that’s supposed to make sure the other factions don’t fight too much. In theory.”

  I shook my head. “Those people are all idiots. All I need is my phone at my side.”

  “Correction. You’ve only needed your phone at your side to win in this office and whenever you go to the East Bumfuck Alternate Reality invitational. If we’re going to the Gathering you’re going to be up against some of the best players in the world. You’ll need to go with a faction if you want to live for more than a half hour in that wilderness.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I’ve never needed anyone but me, and I don’t see that changing when we go to this Gathering thing.”

  “Hey!”

  I rolled my eyes and decided to amend my statement. More to make Colin feel better than because I actually felt that way.

  “Okay. All I need is my phone at my side and you helping me out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Every good player needs someone to act as bait anyways,” I muttered.

  “You know I can hear you when you mutter like that, and it hurts.”

  “Whatever. Tell me more about this queen chick. Is she the queen every year or something? Do they swap it around? What does she do?”

  I suddenly found myself wanting to know everything I could find out about this girl. She was just so… compelling. That face. Those striking blue eyes staring out at me from the pictures. The way she filled out that dress. It made me want to rip that dress off, even if there wasn’t much of a chance she swung in my direction.

  What was a girl to do?

  “So what can you tell me about her?” I asked.

  Colin shrugged as I pulled up more pictures. Turns out they had a whole gallery that was dedicated completely to this queen lady, turns out her name was Erin, and what she’d been up to. ARealms liked to promote the more glamorous aspects of their game. Probably figured it was good for marketing or something.

  “Not much to say. I hear she took control three years ago when they had the first big Gathering, and there hasn’t been a new queen since. Not sure if that’s an appointed position she keeps or if it’s something where you have to cut off her head to take her power, but either way it seems like she’s there to stay.”

  “Very interesting,” I said. I tapped my lips as I looked at this Erin girl. Beautiful and the top player in the game? Someone who managed to hold onto her position for so long? That seemed like someone who had a target painted on her back. She sounded like the perfect opportunity for me to really test out how good I was.

  It was a damn shame I was probably never going to get close enough to her to try myself against her.

  “I don’t like the look in your eyes Anna,” Colin said. “You only get like that when you’re planning something that’s going to get me in trouble.”

  I fixed Colin with my best and most innocent look. From the way he stared down at me, skepticism incarnate, it didn’t seem that he was believing the sweet and innocent act one bit. Oh well. It was worth a try.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about,” I said.

  “I don’t? Because I’ve noticed that around the time you start telling me I don’t have anything to worry about is usually exactly when I should start worrying.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Seriously. It’s not like I’m going to get close enough to her royal highness to do anything.”

  Oh the things I would do to her royal highness if I could get close enough to have a little fun, though. I flipped to a picture where she was in an armored bikini of all things and suddenly I was feeling things that hadn’t hit me this strong since I first hit puberty and realized I was a lot more interested in being “just friends” with some of my girlfriends and that boys were still yucky.

  “See you’re trying to make me feel better by telling me you’re not going to get close enough to the most powerful and well known player in the game to try and do anything to her, but what I’m hearing is that the only reason you’re not going to try and kill the most powerful and well known player in the game is because you won’t get close enough to try it.”

  “Well to be fair there are other things holding me back,” I said.

  “And what, praytell, would those things be?”

  “I’m sure she’s got guards surrounding her. Maybe some anti-magic stuff. Speaking of, are you going to tell me how you were able to survive that spell? I thought for sure that would kill you.”

  “If you’re not going to tell me how you managed to get a high enough sword hit to kill my character then I’m not going to tell you what anti-magic spell I used to avoid your usual tricks. You really pissed off Reg, by the way. He barely managed to unflag himself before that fireball went soaring past.”

  “Reg can suck it,” I said. “Unflagging his character is about the only thing he can do without getting himself killed anyways. Not my fault he sucks.”

  Besides, I was a woman on a mission. I clicked through the spell database until I found something that behaved like what he’d just done. It was a ward that attached to a player and caused any spells thrown at them to fizzle out. There was a note that the only way to kill a character with that ward, at least with magic, was to accelerate something to a sufficient speed outside of the ward’s sphere of influence and let physics do the rest of the heavy lifting once the accelerated object, say a nice rock or knife or something, entered the anti-magic field.

  Apparently the developers got the idea from some old fantasy book I’d never read. Interesting.

  “So this is what you used?”

  The look of surprise on Colin’s face was all the confirmation I needed.

  “Did you really think you were going to hide something like that from me? Of course we both know I know how to fight this thing, so I guess it doesn’t matter that I know what it is…”

  “Would you shut up and go back to the pictures of good ol’ queen Erin or something?”

  I shot him a dangerous look. He shrugged and grinned. “What can I say? She’s hot!”

  “Fine.” I clicked and the pictures came back up. I didn’t even close out the window with queen hottie in it. I just moved to another tab to look up that spell. I didn’t want to miss out on one moment of that hotness on my screen.

  “Damn,” Colin said.

  “Move over buddy,” I said. “Because I saw her first!”

  “Great. Now you’re going to try and overthrow her and seduce her? Good luck with that.”

  “Let’s just say I’m looking forward to this shindig a lot more than I was.”

  “I’m stoked too, and not because I’m looking forward to dethroning or bedding the queen. Though I guess bedding her might be a lot of fun, now that I think about it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Neither one of us are getting close to her, so you might as well forget it. What I’m really looking forward to is finally facing a real challenge. Nothing like the scrubs around here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I fixed Colin with a level stare that communicated how I was feeling so much more effectively than any words ever could. After a moment his shoulder slumped and he looked away.

  “I guess you are the best around here,” he muttered.

  “You don’t have to sound so dejected. It’s just a simple statement of fact.”

  “I’m good though! At least when I’m not going toe to toe with you,” he said.

  “Right, and I’m good when I go toe to toe with anyone. That makes me the best, and everyone else around here scrubs. It’s not an insult. It’s just the way the world works.”

  “Can’t wait to see you get your ass handed to you at the Gathering then,”
Colin said. “It’ll be interesting to see you develop a taste for humble pie.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” I retorted. “We don’t know how good these people are.”

  “The best players coming in from around the world? The queen participating directly? We won’t have a chance if we don’t join a faction.”

  I sighed. And here we’d come full circle. Back to the same thing Colin griped about every time we went to an Alternate Realms gathering. The entire time we were traveling to the event he griped about how we needed to join a faction to survive. The entire time we were at the event he was looking around in terror even though I always kept us alive and on top. The entire way home he went on about how great his plan was for us to go it alone, as though he had anything to do with it.

  “If you do your usual thing on the ride out there I’m going to leave you by the side of the road Colin. I want you to know that.”

  Colin grinned down at me. “But I’m the one driving. It’s my car!”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy to leave you by the side of the road. Just that I fully plan on doing it if it becomes necessary.”

  “Just remember that you might be a big fish in our small pond, Anna, but out there at the Gathering you’re going up against whales and you’re just a shark,” Colin said.

  “Even better,” I said with a grin. “Whales are nice and big and squishy. Sharks have teeth.”

  “Well that really depends on what kind of shark you’re…”

  Colin trailed off as I fixed him with another deadpan glare that I sincerely hoped communicated just how little I wanted a lesson on shark biology or how many varieties of shark there were in the world.

  “Right. So we should probably nail down some plans…”

  I drifted off. Movement at my cubicle door caught my attention. Speaking of a shark swimming in amongst the minnows. Sheila didn’t stop or say anything, but then again it’s not like she really had to. The point was clear enough. We’d shot the shit long enough, and it was time to get back to work.

  I probably should, considering my plans for leaving all potential contact with work at home. Some of the older guys talked about a magical time before instantaneous worldwide communication when going on vacation meant you actually went on vacation. It sounded nice, but to be safe and avoid a shouting match when I got back it was time to get some stuff done.

  “Right. We’ll talk later. Can’t wait for the weekend. We’re going to the Gathering!” Colin said.

  I grinned and couldn’t help but squeal just a little. We might have our own reasons for going. Me to test myself against the best players in the world. Colin to see me get knocked down a peg or two while testing myself against the best players in the world. Either way it promised to be one hell of an awesome week!

  Just for good measure I pulled up that slideshow of queen Erin and put it on repeat on my second monitor. Hey, it was a lot less creepy than some of the slideshows and wallpapers some of the other guys in the department had. Particularly Japan Dan, though the less said about those questionable cartoons that eventually got him shitcanned the better.

  It was time to work hard for a couple of days, then play hard for a week!

  3: Dread

  “That’s it. I’m not going this year.”

  “What? You can’t just not go!” Trevor said.

  I fixed him with my best glare. It rolled over him like it was nothing. Obviously the terror of showing up at the Gathering and not being in the retinue of Queen Erin the great and powerful, the ever victorious, the perpetually bored, was far more of a threat to him than one of my glares.

  I sighed. “The game is so boring! This is going to be like the fourth year.”

  “Fifth, actually,” Danielle said. “You took the throne in the first year, and you’ve defended it for three years running.”

  I slammed my hand down on the table. Everyone looked up in surprise, suddenly paying attention. It irritated me to no end that they just treated this like it was a gravy train that was going to keep rolling on forever. It irritated me even more that they didn’t seem to care whether or not I was having fun as long as the gravy train was chugging down the tracks. Wasn’t the whole damn point of playing a game like this having fun?

  Well Alternate Realms hadn’t been much fun for me in awhile. Show up at an event. Give everyone a special blessing that only the queen could bestow. Deal with some court intrigue, but not much because everyone in all the factions were so terrified of crossing me and losing favor that they never bothered to make a move against me, and pack it all up at the end of the event.

  At least ARealms was nice enough to pay for us to go to all of these events. They’d also been nice enough to schedule the next Gathering, the biggest they’d ever hosted, just a few short hours from my home city. Everyone else in the group was stoked.

  I wish I could feel the same way.

  “Give me one good reason why I should go to this thing,” I said.

  “If you don’t then ARealms will give the crown to someone else and we’ll have to start paying to attend these events again,” Trevor pointed out.

  “I’m failing to see how that’s my problem,” I said.

  “You’re also sort of contractually obligated to show up at those things as long as you’re the queen and they’re paying us to come out,” Danielle said. “If you agreed to come to one of their things and then didn’t show they could probably sue you for breach of contract or something.”

  I buried my head in my hands and started massaging at my temples. I wanted to play a new game. Sure Alternate Realms had been fucking awesome when it came out. Combining live action role-playing with a phone app that tracked all your statistics for you and updated them live and on the fly? I could kiss the genius son-of-a-bitch who came up with that idea. Actually I had kissed half of the duo that came up with the initial idea. I kissed her quite thoroughly and all over at Gathering 2 or 3. They were all starting to run together. Hot and rich? I was all about that until she also turned out to be dreadfully boring when talking about anything other than this game.

  This damn game. I happened to get in early, take over, and now I couldn’t get anyone to attack me and make things interesting. I was like a mafia don who everyone was afraid to approach, and it was making everything so dull. The idea of going to one more of these Gatherings had all the appeal of getting a tooth drilled without any anesthetic, only less fun.

  “What if I just fake a sickness to get out of it?” I asked.

  “Why are you so intent about getting out of it anyways?” Trevor asked.

  “Because there are no new worlds to conquer! I’m at the top of the game and there’s nothing else to do but look pretty and wave. I’m less useful than the Queen of fucking England. I’m a pretty ornament the company trots out talking about how great it is, but it sucks because no one ever comes at me.”

  “So? It’s a pretty sweet gig you’ve got! Top player in the best AR game out there!” Danielle said.

  I poked a finger at her and sent some of my fries spilling. I grimaced and wondered what all those players who stared at me when we were at ARealms events would think if they saw us sitting here in a fast food place talking about the game. Not that I should even be eating fries like that. They went straight to a couple parts of my body that meant I had to spend a lot of extra time in the gym keeping them under control.

  “It’s a pretty sweet gig for you two, you mean. You show up and get to have all the fun of swishing around with the royal party, and then you get to go off and have your intrigues and your role-playing fun while I’m stuck in the palace waiting for other faction leaders to stop by and tell me how wonderful I am.”

  “What about the groupies?” Trevor asked.

  “You’ve never pulled a groupie in your life, Trev.”

  I giggled and reached out to slap the hand Danielle offered for a high five. That burn was some seriously low hanging fruit, but it felt good. I was in a mood where I needed to snap at something. Needed
to sink my claws in. Trevor just happened to be handy. The poor guy.

  He retaliated by sticking his tongue out at me. Okay, not the classiest of moves, but then again it’s not like insulting his masculinity right out the gate was the classiest move on my part.

  “I’m talking about you. If you don’t go to this thing then you’re going to miss out on all that primo fangirl tail you pull at these things every year.”

  Danielle rolled her eyes. “Yeah right Trevor. Like appealing to her horniness is going to work.”

  I stroked my chin for a moment and thought about that. A smile came to my face as I thought of some of the fun I’d had over the years. ARealms always put together a castle at the center of their playing field for me to hang out in, and ever since my dalliance with one of the co-founders, that had to be year two, there’d conveniently been a room in those castles that contained a little cot that was just big enough for two people. I figured that was a lasting “thank you” from Darla for all the fun we’d had that week two or three years ago.

  “Actually the man might have a point. I do tend to have a lot of fun at those events,” I said.

  Honestly it was starting to feel like my only love life came at these events. Not that it was surprising since it seemed like every other weekend I was being dragged to an event thanks to ARealms trying to expand their video gaming empire.

  “You can’t be serious,” Danielle said.

  “Hey, these things are my only social outlet since it’s the only thing we ever do. Give me a break!”

  “I’ve got an even better reason for you to go to this thing. Better than any fangirl groupie you might run into who wants a roll in the hay with the queen just to say she did,” Danielle said.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “What on earth could possibly be better than having a roll in the hay with some newbie who’s a little star struck? Because I’ve got a shortlist in my mind and none of it is really coming out on top.”

  “Yeah? Well think about it. This is the biggest one of these things ARealms has ever put on. They’re flying in their best players from around the world. This isn’t the nationals. This thing is going to be international.”